ACCOUNTANT’S PROFILE: PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS

Abstract

Abstract:The profession of the accountant has many aspects. Accountants shape the largest amount of information in an enterprise and play an important role in the enterprise's activity. This profession is highly regulated, very responsible and usually includes a wide range of topics: including but not limited to different spheres of accounting, formation of accounting policies, or even information system for enterprises. This suggests the need for an investigation into the accountant's profile, in order to determine the set of features which ideally should be developed for the profession. The purpose of the article is to investigate the accountant's profile from the perception of students and practitioners. For the achievement of this purpose the following methods were used: a questionnaire-based study, information systematization, comparison, and summarization. The results of the research from the study were used for the evaluation of the profile of the accountant, for the development of the necessary set of features an accountant should hold, and finally, the results may be used for the future assessment of accounting study programs of higher educational institutions. JEL Classification Numbers: M40, M41UDC Classification: 378; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12955/cbup.v5.1034Keywords: accountant's profile, features, perception IntroductionThere is no enterprise, institution, or organization where accounting would not be used. Accounting is one of the first systems of gathering information for managing economic activity (Mackevičius, 2004). In any type of business, the existence of the accounting profession is required. The field of accounting is very large and includes but is not limited to: public accountants, internal accountants who work in industrial companies, finance and/or trade, accountants who worked in the government, and accountants as academics (Amilin, 2016). The information given by accounting comprises roughly 60% to 90% of all economic information, which is necessary to plan, analyze, and manage the activity of the enterprise while guaranteeing its continuance (Mackevičius, 2004). Accountants have to be the people who would help the managers of companies to with many tasks including: the introduction of new information on a company's activity and its control forms in order to increase the responsibility of the employees, and to make management system of the company more effective (Mackevičius & Subačienė, 2016). This leads to the need for an analysis of the accountant's profile, which includes determining its features, and expressing their functions and responsibilities correctly. Although the perception of the accountant's profile may be different and may vary in respect of the students and the practitioners. An analysis of the accountant's profile in this aspect will give us insights into development into the attributes of this profession. The purpose of the article is to investigate the accountant's profile in the perception of students and practitioners. For the achievement of the purpose of th...